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I get off the bus in 1870, leaving the supporting cast for The Warriors on the bus. I could have dragged them along to use as muscle, but they would’ve been more trouble than they were worth. Even spirits that dumb know how to do the “exact words” thing.
I even did ‘em a favor. I made it so they could truthfully tell their boss that they obeyed their orders: I didn’t go below 14th Street.
Exact words, my friends.
Continue reading “The Economancer Chapter 6 – 14th Street, 19th Century”Riding a bus through the soul of a city is different than riding it through the physical world, as you might expect. The physical world has limits: the island of Manhattan is thirteen miles long and just over two miles wide at its widest point. Depending on what shape they’re welded into, steel, concrete, and glass can only support so much of their own weight. Two objects can’t occupy the same space. Time only ever moves forward, so whether you miss something dearly or if it’s a scar on your memory, once something is gone it can never really come back.
None of that is true about souls. Souls are about meaning. That’s as true about the City’s soul as it is about yours. That’s how the Statue of Liberty can be a mile-high colossus whose lamp can be seen thirty miles out to sea – not that I would recommend going out into the soul of the wild ocean beyond the harbor. That’s how Coney Island can be as big and full of wonders as you remember it from when you were a kid, instead of being a three-block remnant filled with carnie rides. That’s how Manhattan can be as big as it looks in the movies and TV, with Studio 54 from the heyday and Nineties nightclubs separated by only a few blocks of Eighties urban decay.
And that’s how I can be accosted on the bus by gang members from The Warriors. Not the Coney Island Warriors themselves, oh no. They might actually be reasonable. Not even the Baseball Furies, who everyone pictures when they’re thinking of The Warriors.
Continue reading “The Economancer Chapter 5 – Downtown Bus”